


An Addition to the Saga of Death

by aheadfulloffollies



Category: Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer
Genre: Angst, Gen, Kai POV, au where cinder dies, d ea th au, death au, mostly just him mourning and angsting, parallels to winter's actual ending though, very badly written but whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:48:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28177911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aheadfulloffollies/pseuds/aheadfulloffollies
Summary: Kai mourns Cinder's death in this AU where she dies during the rebellion on Luna.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	An Addition to the Saga of Death

It wasn't supposed to go this way.

As Kai looked around the clean palace walls surrounding him, the blood gone but the stench remaining. He felt his hand clench around the severed metal finger, the last thing he had of Cinder.

The last thing he had left of the hero.

He supposed that was the great conundrum: were heroes truly saviors unless they saved? Humanity tended to think so, but the bitterness that planted a seed in his heart said something much darker.

Heroes were supposed to bring change. They were supposed to be the face of hope, of love, of all the things everyone longed for and, for some reason probably buried in the deep pathology of the human mind, never showed until someone stepped up with a grand plan to do it for them. Looking around him, Kai saw none of that.

Ruin.

Everywhere, there was ruin, a mere memory hidden behind the now-cleanliness of the walls. Where there had been a lack of hope before, now there was depletion, and any glimpse of it had gone out as fast as Cinder's life.

_As fast_. It had been so quick, quicker than shedding a tear or the time it took to smile. One minute her life was there: a witty, sarcastic, heroic soul. A mere second later, it was gone. And not just Cinder either. Everything she had created: the legacy, the intention, the revolution, the _friendships_... without its leader, everything had dissolved into chaos even more than it had been before.

And Kai was still married to Levana.

He shuddered at the thought, recalling the cold glass of her stare and the smile- the thing closest to warm he'd ever seen her exhibit- that took over her face afterward. What he'd already seen about his now-wife was horrifying. What he'd seen in that moment, after she'd killed her niece and stopped an entire revolution with the act, was worse.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

He supposed that this was an odd thing to fixate on, but Torin once told him that grief did odd things to people. It messed with senses and capabilities, made the probable improbable and everyone reckless. It was a force that couldn't be reckoned with, and all anyone could do was wait for it to pass.

Kai took a single step forward, the first movement he'd made since Levana had dragged Cinder's body away to proclaim it to the city, since the ringing in his ears started and the palace was cleaned and the rest of the Rampion Crew were locked up in the dungeon without a single thing Kai could do about it, left there to rot until their sentences. Until the trials that would prove them guilty no matter the evidence, because Levana would make evidence if she had to. She would create anything she could to erase any memory of what had actually been.

Another step. And another, until he was standing there, on the fake glass balcony Cinder had once stood on herself before jumping off. For a second, Kai contemplated doing the same. Perhaps if he did, a new wave of action would follow. A new revolution might begin. But no, he couldn't do that. Not to his country or to this one- to Luna.

Cinder may have been gone, but he wasn't. And he had to keep it that way. For all of them.

He took a deep, shuddering breath and opened his clenched fist, imprinted from Cinder's metal finger.

It was the only thing left. The only thing linking him to her, to the girl that she was and the one she should have had the chance to be. The only thing linking him to who _he_ had been too, the person who wasn't so broken inside.

"Broken" wasn't a word he liked to use to describe people. Weren't they all, a little bit? It seemed pointless to point out something that everyone was deep inside as if it were defining, as if it were different. This, though? This was a different kind of broken, everything deep inside him shattered to dust. It was like he didn't know anything, or anyone, right from wrong or good from bad. He was in a haze, and it covered up all of his senses, making it impossible to even think. Cinder hadn't been his everything before, no. But now that she was gone, she had taken it anyway.

A part of him resented her. Resented her dying, her living, her trying, her _failing_. A larger part grieved for her, and an even larger one begged him to let go.

It was the only way to walk forward. To try, to do the best for him and his country and everyone else who was still alive. Cinder's finger, the metal warm from his body heat, rolled in his hand as he considered what he was about to do.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

But it was.

He spun the blood-stained finger between his hands, reminding himself of all it was for the last time. A reminder of a hero, the only thing left of a martyr, a remnant of what could have been. A memory of perhaps what was the best thing to ever happen to him and what might have been the worst, too.

He held the finger over the water and let go.


End file.
